In the Spirit of Humanity

By Robert Parker

Student chef, Dafydd, finds himself unexpectedly in the year 2055, right in the middle of a battle between an artificial intelligence and ruthless government agents. Things get complicated when his memory is used to manipulate his allegiance.
This novella shares some characters with previous novels: Egg Heads (2041 to 2048) and Anything Anywhere Anytime (2032 to 2072), but should be able to stand on its own.
The author would love constructive feedback and will be happy with a 2 to 4 star rating.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Parker
• Release date: Jun 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005558567

Robert Parker

I've been an Engineer, Technician and Programmer, so naturally I like technical stuff, but my stories stretch the limits of what is plausible and focus primarily on the absurdity of human behaviour. I have the usual number of wives, children, dogs, cats, talking trees etc. I'm also very fond of the wonderful Australian birdlife that comes freely to my home. These humans and other creatures inspire me. I have little interest in politics or war. If you've tried out my stories, I'd love to hear what you think, good or bad.

Book preview

IN THE SPIRIT OF HUMANITY

by Robert Parker

Copyright 2022 Robert Parker

Smashwords Edition

Student chef, Dafydd, finds himself unexpectedly in the year 2055, right in the middle of a battle between an artificial intelligence and ruthless government agents. Things get complicated when his memory is used to manipulate his allegiance.

This novella shares some characters with previous novels: Egg Heads (2041 to 2048) and Anything Anywhere Anytime (2032 to 2072), but should be able to stand on its own.

Dear reader, please note that all characters and most planets mentioned in this story are purely fictional and any resemblance to known zoological species, or the astronomical bodies on which they live, is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other stories by this Author available on Smashwords

Egg Heads

Urchin House Blues

Anything Anytime Anywhere

Eat Me Not

Alien Kidnap

Reporting Errors

For the benefit of other readers, please report errors via google forms.

For Max, a very good boy,

2003-2014

R.I.P

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Susan

Chapter 2 - Driesk

Chapter 3 - O'Brien

Chapter 4 - Brodowski

Chapter 5 - Sergay

Chapter 6 - Alice

Chapter 7 - Alice

Chapter 8 - Alice

Chapter 9 - Mot and Jolly

Chapter 10 - Susan

Chapter 11 - Acme

Chapter 12 - Dafydd

Acknowledgements

About Robert Parker

Chapter 1 - Susan

Dafydd knew there was always a possibility he would inherit his mother’s condition, but dreading the first seizure turned out to be worse than the experience.

He’d been in the middle of a prac session. Mr Batlow, the master chef, was just heading over to check on Dafydd’s chicken Kiev, then the kitchen had filled with red, yellow and green flames. It was both wonderful and frightening. Such vivid colours! His fellow students had formed into rows of orange statues that were slowly melting. Luckily, he knew none of it could be real.

Only when darkness returned did he consider there would be a price to pay. A bitten tongue, a bruised skull, or simply just humiliation. The class bullies would make sure of that.

He hoped someone with medical knowledge had protected his head. It didn’t matter that the chicken would be burnt and that his career was over before it had begun. No one was going to hire an epileptic for a commercial kitchen full of sharp knives.

Why then was he standing in a very small, completely dark room? He could sense that the wall or door that faced him was only centimetres from his nose, the space was practically a vertical coffin. This didn’t fit with the scenario that he’d built to explain his blackout, or those visions of apocalypse.

His hearing was odd too, every little noise amplified. Beyond the walls, there were many strange rumblings, a faint scream, and much closer, someone had just woken. Was this normal? His mother hadn’t mentioned anything like this. He heard the rustle of over-starched sheets, then a woman’s voice, too young to be his mother.

‘What?’ She sounded plaintive.

He tried to draw breath to reply, only to find he couldn’t. No matter; he could hear better if he didn’t breathe; even his heart had stopped to listen.

‘When did this happen?’ the woman said, then swore softly – mumbled words, some new to his vocabulary. Erk or Erks was used several times. He wondered what that meant.

Static electricity crackled as her feet padded across the carpet in quick little strides. He guessed that she was short even before she opened the door.

‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ she asked, then turned away. Her dark silky hair and dragon motif gown hid most of her features. The dim lighting gave her legs an anaemic hue. She’d gone into the bathroom opposite. Her voice echoed from the tiles. ‘Okay, so they’ve changed their M.O. Do we cancel today’s op? No? Pity.’

Apart from his closet, and the en-suite, there were two other doors, both of them closed. Beyond one, some sort of machine was waiting. He knew he had talked with this machine recently, so maybe his memory was coming back. The machine was a car. A self driving car. He couldn’t remember the college having one, let alone one that you could talk to. And why would they have let him near it? He was hopeless with technology.

The toilet flushed and she reappeared, twenty something, a blend of eurasian ethnicities, her dark eyes staring at him.

‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘Something’s up.’

He was fairly sure that she hadn’t been talking to him earlier, but now she approached him – well within his personal space – and stared up into his nostrils; she appeared to be slightly cross-eyed. When she stepped back, he read her lips: ‘This can’t be good.’

Dafydd made another attempt to speak and her eyebrows climbed higher. She backed further away.

‘Trev?’ she said into the air between them. ‘You know that cheat code you gave me? Yeah, the one I didn’t want and said I’d never use. Well I think I’ve broken the Erk. It’s returned to factory standard.’

Her eyes continued to study Dafydd, then relaxed. ‘Oh! They’ve all reset? That’s a relief. You’re not lying to me, are you? I’ll be your boss someday. I’ll get you back if you’re lying. Lights.’ The ceiling began to glow and she dropped her gown. ‘So, how do I reboot it back to office mode?’

Dafydd stepped out of his wardrobe to keep her in sight. His vision was kind of fuzzy, almost pixelated, so it didn’t worry him she was naked. Around the corner, he could see two beds; only one had been used. There were no windows, but the warmth coming through the far wall suggested ceiling high shutters. Since when could he see warmth? And how could he see warmth?

The woman continued to speak, a series of grunts, ‘yeps’, ‘nahs’, and ‘nopes’, interspersed with words that meant nothing to him. She was rifling through an open suitcase on the second bed. The contents were arranged in neat piles. She clearly didn’t intend to stay, or had only just arrived.

She began to dress without any consideration for modesty, so Dafydd returned to inspect the wardrobe, all the while remaining uncomfortably aware of her every movement. The wardrobe was interesting, too. He had hoped to find a door through to the college kitchens, but all he found was an odd appliance mounted to the back wall. Tubes and wires dangled from it and various lights blinked. He thought it might be a medical device. It did seem familiar somehow.

Dafydd’s strange three-sixty degree awareness continued to expand. He somehow knew that the final door (the one that didn’t go into the garage) would open onto a much larger space.

There was no handle, but when he stepped that way, the door slid back with a self-satisfied swish. The woman gasped and he quickly exited.

Outside, a gently sloping ramp, about three metres wide, spiralled around a vast, harshly lit atrium. Blue LED lighting. On the opposite side, his ramp intertwined with another, completing a double helix. A pair of swallows had entered and were zooming in and out of the drizzle falling from the broken skylight. He approached the unguarded edge of the ramp to count the levels and saw other people doing the same above and below him. Dafydd quickly stepped back into the shadows, just as they did.

Up and down the ramp, doors alternated between narrow and wide. The wider door would be for the car. Marks on the ramp indicated that many of the cars hadn’t wiped their tyres before entering. Graffiti across the closest wall read, Erks Rok, Sibogs Sook. Other vandals were less biased.

Nothing here looked very clean. He decided this building couldn’t be part of his college campus. It was more like a seedy motel.

Three doors up, a featureless orange man was observing him. Not a man, not even human, for it had no face. A robot, though the term android might be more appropriate. It reminded him of the burning statues he’d seen during his seizure. They must have moved him into some kind of high tech hospital, though, if the woman was a nurse, why was she the one who had been in the bed? Could this be a mental asylum? He would find out soon enough if he tried to leave.

Dafydd walked down the ramp. He sensed the animated orange mannequin following, so he began to jog. It felt good to run without breathing, light and effortless, with long floating strides that landed smoothly. It had been a while since he’d enjoyed a good run like this.

He passed another android as it emerged from a doorway. It immediately ducked back inside, or had it been pulled back? Dafydd heard the rumble of many more feet descending. He didn’t need to turn to know what they were. He would have sprinted faster, only he didn’t know how far he needed to run.

Unexpectedly, someone shouted, ‘Get your threads out of my $^%*ing way.’

Dafydd pressed himself into a different doorway as a car of an unusual design rolled past. It was something like his late-father’s roofless golf buggy. The single occupant, a middle-aged man in pyjamas, glared at him. After it had gone, he could see it slowing for more androids on the far side of the atrium. They also were descending. Dafydd appeared to be the only human on